KIRKUS REVIEW

The lives of Mary Todd Lincoln, born into a comfortable slave-holding Kentucky family, and Elizabeth Keckley, born in Virginia of a slave mother and slave-owning father, are presented as a novel in two parallel fictional biographies. Although Keckley accomplished much in her life, she is best known as seamstress to, and confidant of, the wife of President Lincoln. Readers will certainly learn and perhaps find interest in the education of both, as well as their living conditions and their lives. Despite the chasms of difference, their childhoods were alike in their unhappy events (Keckley’s, of course, was far more serious because of her bitter servitude). An epilogue completes the biographies and a bibliography provides sources. However, one must ask why the well-spoken Keckley uses terms such as “chilluns” and “massa.” Above all, what part of this is fiction and what is not? Caveat lector: This is a fictional treatment, not a biography. (Historical fiction. 10-14)

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